Faithful fools

Monogamy is not so much a single strategy as a range of different strategies ("Your cheatin' heart", 21 November, p 28). Rating sexual exclusiveness on a scale of 1 to 10, we might class baboon-type promiscuity as 1, polygyny as 5, "cheating monogamy" as 7 to 9 (depending on the amount of cheating), and faithful monogamy as 10. Human societies are all monogamous in some sense, but range from about 6 to 10 on this scale, from the relative sexual freedom and occasional polygyny of most hunter gatherer peoples, to the strict sexual mores of, say, Orthodox Jews or Mormons.

Although most species seem to have a common type of sexual behaviour, this can change in response to food conditions. Normally promiscuous baboons are more likely to form one-male troops when food is short. And monogamous Mentaweian langurs become polygynous when moving into deforested areas where food is plentiful. ...

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